House and technology

The list for the phone call to the landlord, and one of the first sets of sentences anybody really has to produce abroad. In the middle of it sits bricoler, and the interesting thing is not what it means but that English has no verb for it. Il bricole tous les week-ends says somebody spends Saturdays fixing and building things about the house — a plain, conjugable verb that fits anywhere a verb fits. English has to reach for an initialism and bolt a verb onto it: « to do DIY », or « he is into DIY ». The French noun is le bricolage, and English did borrow that one — but only into art criticism and anthropology, where « bricolage » means making something out of whatever is to hand, which is a theory word and not a Saturday. Un bricoleur is simply somebody who is handy, and c’est du bricolage is a complaint: the job was botched.